We left Gracias in the morning with the aim to get to Danli / El Paraiso near the border with Nicaragua, around 350km away but a 7 hours’ drive. The road was not too bad and and we passed through coffee and banana growing region . We apprehended having to go into the capital, Tegucigalpa, but the main road cuts right through the city and in the end it went quite smoothly and the traffic was moving.
We stopped for the night at a Texaco petrol station and parked alongside trucks. It was fine until the bar attached to the station turned the music up at 9pm! It was Saturday night and the locals had a good time!
LOS MANOS – BORDER WITH NICARAGUA
WHERE THE ROAD TO SOUTH AMERICA STOPS FOR US !!!
Left early in the morning for the border. As we got closer, there was a long line of traffic. Trucks parked on both sides of the road was making it difficult to go through and at one point we had to wait for about 20mn until some cars reversed to let an oncoming truck go by.
We eventually got to the Honduran border post and cleared the formalities rapidly. We proceeded up the road to the Nicaraguan post where one of the officials asked for our car documents and then disappeared. He came back 10 minutes later and announced that we could not enter Nicaragua as our car is a Right Hand Drive (RHD) and not allowed on the roads !! He was accompanied by someone who spoke some English and we tried to argue our case and asked to speak to a superior. We even said we would get the car on a transporter but to no avail. The officer allegedly called Head Office in Managua for clearance but nothing could be done and they suggested we go back to Puerto Cortes In Honduras to ship the car instead. Not happy!
After spending a good hour there, we had no option but to turn back and go through passport control and into Honduras again. Further down the road, at a customs checkpoint, the Honduran officials were surprised to see us again. They remembered seeing us on the way to the border and asked us what had happened. We explained and they were surprised, but one of the guys was helpful and phoned some of his contacts in Puerto Cortes and gave us the name of a shipping agent there.
We had two options:
1) try and go to another border crossing and hope that the officer on duty let us through or 2) make our way back to Puerto Cortes and try to ship the car direct to Cartagena in Colombia.( thereby by-passing the need to drive to Panama and ship the car from there as there is no road access through the Darien Gap)
We decided to go to Puerto Cortes as there was no guarantee that we would be allowed in Nicaragua and we then also had confirmation that Costa Rica no longer accepts RHD vehicles and was even stricter…
